Each of Us Has a Job to Do

"Today, we find ourselves in the teeth of a global pandemic, one with a mortality rate close to the Antonine Plague that killed millions of people during Marcus Aurelius’ reign. Our medical efforts are running behind. Our supply chains are overtaxed. The cowardice and incompetence of many governments (or rather the heads of many governments, since responsibility falls on the leader, whether they accept it or not) has been laid bare. So what do we do?"Ryan explains how we must handle this new, dangerous stage of the pandemic, on today's Daily Stoic Podcast.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow Daily Stoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:06Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to The Daily Stoic, where each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystoic.com.

• 0:29Ryan Holiday?

  Each of us has a job to do. The world is constantly grappling with vexing problems. This was true in the times of Zeno and Marcus Aurelius, just as it's true today. Big and small, immediate, and on the looming horizon, we have always been in crisis, from wars to plagues, to civil unrest, to natural disasters. It is the story of human life on this planet. It is the story of history, as we've said. Things keep happening. Things keep going wrong. They always have. They always will, provided, that is, that we keep solving them and keep surviving. Today, we find ourselves in the teeth of a global pandemic, one with

• 1:12Ryan Holiday?

  the mortality rate close to the Antonine Plague that killed millions of people during Marcus Aurelius's reign. Our medical efforts are running behind. Our supply chains are overtaxed. The cowardice and incompetence of many governments, or rather, the heads of many governments, since the responsibility falls on the leader, whether they accept it or not, has been laid bare. So what do we do? We must pull together, as humans have for centuries, as Cincinnatus was called from his fields to save Rome, as citizens were called to plant victory gardens in the Second World War, as activists and ordinary people rose up to give women the right to vote and civil rights to all people, as the free

• 1:52Ryan Holiday?

  world rose up collectively to roll back the tide of Soviet aggression in arms and in finance. So too are we being called again. Whether you're a senator or stocking shelves in a warehouse, each of us has an important job to do, especially at a moment like this. The Stoics believed that each of us was important, that each person focusing on what they could control would be able to collectively to turn the tide of history. Marcus Aurelius wrote that even people asleep, even the shameless and the terrible, were part of the equation. Even those incompetent leaders are helping to wake us up and remind people that we have to save ourselves. That's what Sympathia is really about,

• 2:36Ryan Holiday?

  that we are this large whole. Each of us, rich and poor, educated or not, is important. Each of us can make a difference by keeping our families safe, by making smart decisions, by helping our neighbors, by voting, by keeping calm, by bringing our network to bear on problems, by sacrificing, by taking care of our health and listening to instructions, by delivering the mail, or treating patients, or investing in the market, whatever our job happens to be. Do your job. Do it with courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom. Come together with the team, and we'll get through this. Hey, thanks for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. You can sign up to get our daily email at dailystoic.com/email. I also encourage you, if you want to take your practice of Stoicism

• 3:21Ryan Holiday?

  to the next level, to sign up for Daily Stoic Life, which is our members-only program. It's got all sorts of awesome benefits. You can check that out at dailystoiclife.com.